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Religious Quotes

We’ve collected the best Religious Quotes from the greatest minds of the world: Aidy Bryant, Lafcadio Hearn, Maria Montessori, Paul Kalanithi, Neale Donald Walsch. Use them as an inspiration.

1
I was a religious ‘SNL‘ watcher all through middle school. I was obsessed with Molly Shannon, Ana Gasteyer, Cheri Oteri – they were on right when I found the show. Then I started watching the older episodes, and it just totally blew my mind that my dream show already existed.
Aidy Bryant
2
But every great scripture, whether Hebrew, Indian, Persian, or Chinese, apart from its religious value will be found to have some rare and special beauty of its own; and in this respect the original Bible stands very high as a monument of sublime poetry and of artistic prose.
3
The consciousness of knowing how to make oneself useful, how to help mankind in many ways, fills the soul with noble confidence, almost religious dignity.
4
Had I been more religious in my youth, I might have become a pastor, for it was the pastoral role I’d sought.
5
The new spirituality will also base itself on a third very large spiritual understanding, which is that life is eternal. Most religious people claim to believe that, but very few people actually live as if that were true.
6
I was brought up Catholic, and my family is still very religious.
7
Descendants of New England pioneers are proud of their ancestry and glad to proclaim the fact that so far as the United States are concerned, New England is in deed the cradle of religious liberty.
8
I am pleased now that I have lived in a gay as well as a religious ghetto, though it hasn’t been very comfortable. Taken together, their limitations cancel each other out and I have seen the world more kindly and more honestly.
9
We’re nondenominational. I come from Northern Ireland, and we’ve had religious wars for years. I didn’t want to create an illusion that my God is better than your God. So our show is a spiritual show, not a religious show.
10
Religion is all good, but we are almost back to medieval times now, where we are obsessed with going into religious wars and electing our politicians based on their religious statements.
11
The religious doctrine of traditional Judaism entails the acceptance of the nationhood of the Jewish people and the everlasting sanctity of the Land of Israel for them.
12
Man seeks to learn, and man kills himself because of the loss of cohesion in his religious society; he does not kill himself because of his learning. It is certainly not the learning he acquires that disorganizes religion; but the desire for knowledge wakens because religion becomes disorganized.
13
One important theme is the extent to which one can ever correct an error, especially outside any frame of religious forgiveness. All of us have done something we regret – how we manage to remove that from our conscience, or whether that’s even possible, interested me.
14
My main concern is meeting with public because my main commitment, main interest is promotion of human value, human affection, compassion and religious harmony.
15
I can’t understand people calling themselves religious and being hateful. If a preacher is preaching hate, to fear God that’s not religion, that’s not helping humanity, that’s organizing an army to defeat somebody.
Mojo Nixon
16
It is often said by religious people that without its framework, there is no sense of right or wrong. My view is that religion comes after ethics.
17
Most people who came here came for economic reasons or sometimes for religious or political reasons. I didn’t have any of this. I came here, I liked it, I stayed. So I’m a pure American – even more than people who are born here – because I did it by choice as an adult.
18
I believe in God, but in my own unconventional way. We’re not affiliated with any organisation, and I have no religious education of any kind, but I definitely have my own kind of ideas about it.
19
In her religious role, the Queen is head of the Church of England, but in her civic role she cares for all her subjects, and no one is better at making everyone she meets feel valued.
20
Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.
21
I’m not religious, but I do pray. It’s 60 seconds of meditation, visualizing myself, looking at myself, and being conscious of my own consciousness. That will align me for the rest of the day.
22
I have my own religious bond with the God in my own head.
Joe Eszterhas
23
I think you can judge from somebody’s actions a kind of a stability and sense of purpose perhaps created by strong religious roots. I mean, there’s a certain patience, a certain discipline, I think, that religion helps you achieve.
24
It is a religious duty for those who cook to learn how to prepare food in different ways, hygienically, for the table, so that it may be eaten with enjoyment.
25
To me, marriage is partly a religious thing and I’m not religious.
26
During the crusades all were religious mad, and now all are mad for want of it.
John Gabriel Stedman
27
When the soul drifts uncertainly between life and the dream, between the mind’s disorder and the return to cool reflection, it is in religious thought that we should seek consolation.
Gerard De Nerval
28
There is all the difference in the world between teaching children about religion and handing them over to be taught by the religious.
29
When I visited Guantanamo Bay several years ago, I met a team of psychiatrists treating the detainees. When I asked how they distinguished between, say, schizophrenia or bipolarity and a bedrock religious commitment to holy war, they couldn’t answer.
30
Malaysia is a country unlike any other: Full of promise and fragility. Its history, cultural and religious diversity make it a rich, compelling and surprising land.
31
In the public realm, secularism should not concede a single inch to religious intrusions. To argue otherwise is to violate the meaning of secularism.
32
Today’s Islamic fundamentalism is also a cover for political motifs. We should not overlook the political motifs we encounter in forms of religious fanaticism.
33
The orthodox Jewish faith practically excludes woman from religious life.
Abraham Cahan
34
Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect.
35
Being a medium, a lot of religious people are like, ‘ok. that’s talking to the dead.’ The bible talks about it in a very different context so I think there’s more stigma to being a medium.
36
Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.
37
After I left the convent, for 15 years I was worn out with religion, I wanted nothing whatever to do with it. I felt disgusted with it. If I saw someone reading a religious book on a train, I’d think, how awful.
38
I think it’s a mother‘s dream come true to see it work out that way. Not just the mother, but certainly parents, to know that their children have a very solid moral foundation and religious foundation.
39
According to this view, democracy is a product of western culture, and it cannot be applied to the Middle East which has a different cultural, religious, sociological and historical background.
40
I am not religious, but I still feel there is a sacredness about Mothering Sunday, even when I’m just enjoying a lie-in and a cup of tea from my boys.
41
Usually, it is not my habit to address religious issues on the floor. I strongly believe in a person’s right to religious freedom, as well as the separation of church and state.
42
I respect religious rules. I am a true God-fearing Hindu.
43
Convinced that the attachment of colonies to the metropolis, depends infinitely more upon moral and religious feeling, than political arrangement, or even commercial advantage, I cannot but lament that more is not done to instill it into the minds of the people.
44
I am not particularly religious. But I think we do face the question of where God is, why we are created and where does life go, why we exist. That sort of thing. And it is very hard to talk about it these days, because it cannot be proven. It is hard to discuss it rationally.
45
Some people seem to gravitate from one fundamentalism to another, from some kind of secular fundamentalism into a religious fundamentalism or the other way around, which is not very helpful.
46
Dreams are where we visit the many lands and landscapes of human possibility and discover the one where we feel at home. The great religious leaders were all dreamers.
47
I’m no longer religious, but the Bible fascinates me. Hardly anyone reads it anymore, but it’s got everything: it’s a book of poetry, it’s a book of principle, it’s a book of stories, and of myths and of epic tales, a book of histories and a book of fictions, of riddles, fables, parables and allegories.
48
There is no doubt that religion had already waned under the onslaught of the Enlightenment, but it was Freud who provided the radically new understanding of human nature that made any religious explanation of the whats and whys of our personhood seem naive.
49
It’s one thing to be religious, but it’s another thing to make religion your policy.
50
When religious leaders get involved in elections, it is usually with a reactionary social agenda.
Elizabeth Joan Smith
51
In my midteens I went through a brief stage of religious fanaticism, but it was very much about just saying prayers and stuff like that, reciting rosaries and spending a lot of time on that kind of Catholic ritual.
52
I am very religious, but talking about it makes me a bit uncomfortable.
53
I’m just not a religious person, not at all. I consider myself a spiritual person. I was always very drawn to Buddhism, Hinduism. I still meditate.
54
Political organizations have slowly substituted themselves for the Churches as the places for believing practices. Politics has once again become religious.
Michel De Certeau
55
I’m a religious person. I remember my mom told me: ‘Vengeance belongs to God. It’s up to him to wreak vengeance.’ It’s hard for me to get to that point, but that’s the work of God.
56
Most terrorists are people deeply concerned by what they see as social, political, or religious injustice and hypocrisy, and the immediate grounds for their terrorism is often retaliation for an action of the United States.
William Blum
57
I, for one, am quite willing to join the ‘forgive, forget and move oncrowd, but it does make me wonder if Evangelicals are going to sound believable when they say that they tend to vote Republican because of their religious commitments to the family.
58
‘God Loves Uganda‘ is a powerful exploration of the evangelical campaign to change African culture with values imported from America’s Christian Right. The film follows American and Ugandan religious leaders fighting ‘sexual immorality‘ and missionaries trying to convince Ugandans to follow Biblical law.
59
If you go looking for loonies and religious fanatics and dropouts and freaks, I dare say you’ll find it.
60
We’ll limit in all ways the work of religious faiths which are foreign to us.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky
61
It’s just better to promote love and fairness and equality than it is to promote something you think is based on your religious beliefs.
62
Man is the religious animal. He is the only one that’s got true religion, several of them.
Hal Holbrook
63
While religious tolerance is surely better than religious war, tolerance is not without its liabilities. Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us incapable of criticizing ideas that are now patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive.
64
As for the Pope, I am too old to be frightened by his shadow, and am quite sure his shadow or Substance will do less harm to the liberties of my country than will a party, who seek to acquire political power by exciting religious bigotry in the minds of their duped followers.
Ezra Cornell
65
I’m not religious, but wrong or right, that’s me.
Eazy-E
66
Although I was raised Jewish, my upbringing didn’t include any formal religious education or training.
Melissa Gilbert
67
However, intention needn’t enter in, and if a reader sees things in a religious way, and the work is dogmatically acceptable, then I don’t see why it should not be interpreted in that way, as well as in others.
James Schuyler
68
I read all types of books. I read Christian books, I read black novels, I read religious books. I read stuff like ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ and ‘The Dictator’s Handbook‘ and then I turned around and read science-fiction novels.
69
We all have our pet things that we like to get religious about.
Max Cannon
70
I was raised in a religious environment, and my wife is one of the more religious people that I have ever known.
71
Poverty is everyone’s problem. It cuts across any line you can name: age, race, social, geographic or religious. Whether you are black or white; rich, middle-class or poor, we are ALL touched by poverty.
Kathleen Blanco
72
When theology erodes and organization crumbles, when the institutional framework of religion begins to break up, the search for a direct experience which people can feel to be religious facilitates the rise of cults.
Daniel Bell
73
I have the same sense of the power and virtue of knowledge that some people get from a religious background.
Walter Gilbert
74
Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they don’t want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego, their identity.
75
I consider myself a religious person. God is something very personal with me and I don’t flaunt religion in conversation with others.
Richard Chamberlain
76
The emotions that sustain religious belief are all, in fact, deeply ordinary and deeply recognisable to anybody who has ever made their way across the common ground of human experience as an adult.
77
Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.
78
I don’t think the 9/11 attacks taught us anything we didn’t already know about religion. It has long been obvious – even to the deeply religious – that religious fanaticism is an extremely dangerous deranger of otherwise sane and goodhearted people.
79
The trend of all knowledge at the present is to specialize, but archaeology has in it all the qualities that call for the wide view of the human race, of its growth from the savage to the civilized, which is seen in all stages of social and religious development.
Margaret Murray
80
Fascism is a religious concept.
Benito Mussolini
81
I am not a religious person, nor do I have any regrets.
82
I don’t think that the permanence of the individual human soul is an indispensable part of religious thought.
83
I’m not a religious person, but I read the Bible many years ago.
84
I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal to reason and is in conflict with morality.
85
Religious and spiritual leaders should be held accountable for environmental activism, not only because they have access to large communities and can influence votes, but because service is integral to religious and spiritual life.
86
I don’t believe in God personally but I have great respect for those people who do and different people have different religious views in this country.
87
Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science. I’m not religious, but I put it that way because I feel so strongly. It’s the one thing you do not ever do. You’ve got to have standards.
88
Religious liberty should be a bipartisan issue.
89
I also found that for myself, since I’ve had no religious education, it was so interesting to see the different versions of heaven and what life on earth means.
90
Religion must mainly be a matter of principles only. It cannot be a matter of rules. The moment it degenerates into rules, it ceases to be a religion, as it kills responsibility which is an essence of the true religious act.
91
Time to time I get together with the rabbis, with religious leaders, leaders of congregations, and I talk to them, and wherever a need arises, we do everything we can to meet those needs.
92
Religious beliefs evolved by group-selection, tribe competing against tribe, and the illogic of religions is not a weakness but their essential strength.
93
But I wish to point out that it is entirely wrong to say that the Chinese are not religious.
94
I am an atheist, and I believe that religion should not be in the classrooms; it has to be in the churches. In the classrooms, you have to form citizenship, not people with religious beliefs, that corresponds to the private sphere.
Pedro Sanchez
95
My dear wife has, I would say, probably never opened a religious book, and seems to be one of those people to whom the whole idea is utterly remote and absurd.
96
If we weren’t born with anti-social passionsnarcissism, envy, lust, meanness, greed, hunger for power, just to name the more obvious – why the need for so many laws, whether religious or secular, that govern behavior?
97
Our Constitution recognises no other power than that of persuasion, for enforcing religious observances.
Richard Mentor Johnson
98
As the culture war is about irreconcilable beliefs about God and man, right and wrong, good and evil, and is at root a religious war, it will be with us so long as men are free to act on their beliefs.
99
You’re basing your laws and your whole outlook on natural life on mythology. It won’t work. That’s why you have all these problems in the world. Name them: India, Pakistan, Ireland. Name them-all these problems. They’re all religious problems.
100
A lot of the powerful religious leaders, from Jesus to Buddha to Tibetan monks, they’re really talking about the same things: love and acceptable, and the value of friendship, and respecting yourself so you can respect others.
Jena Malone
101
Self-denial is indispensable to a strong character, and the highest kind comes from a religious stock.
Theodore Parker
102
I mean, I talk about being Jewish a lot. It’s funny because I do think of myself as Jewish ethnically, but I’m not religious at all. I have no religion.
103
Faith is important, even if you’re not religious. You need to have beliefs in people or things.
104
For as spiritual as some people think my books are, I’ve never really dealt with religious things.
105
Atheists have as much conscience, possibly more, than people with deep religious conviction, and they still have the same problem of how they reconcile themselves to a bad deed in the past. It’s a little easier if you’ve got a god to forgive you.
106
Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship.
107
I hope I never get so old I get religious.
108
I’m not super, super religious. If this is okay to say, I’m more culturally Jewish.
109
When I was young, I was religious.
110
Every science is a profane restatement of the preceding dogmas of the religious period.
Francis Parker Yockey
111
What I believe in touches many aspects of religious and spiritual thought. Mainly I’m influenced and inspired by the eastern yogi‘s aspect of mysticism, Which is, I think, the future.
112
The vast majority of Muslims living here are peaceful citizens. Unfortunately, however, we also see religious and political fanaticism among Muslim groups in Germany.
113
The media seems to think only abortion and gay marriage are religious issues. Poverty is a moral issue, it’s a faith issue, it’s a religious issue.
114
I protect my skin with sunscreen and am religious about keeping my face moisturized and properly protected all day, so I also use a face lotion with SPF 30.
Amanda Beard
115
The Pilgrims were unified by their religious zeal, but they couldn’t fish, they didn’t know how to hunt, and they were bad at farming. In fact, they never had a good harvest until they learned to fish cod and plow the waste in the ground as fertilizer.
116
Religious freedom is too sacred a right to be restricted or prohibited in any degree without convincing proof that a legitimate interest of the state is in grave danger.
Frank Murphy
117
We looked too long for God and truth through words alone. The fruit for humanity has been rather limited, it seems to me – especially when I observe every day the extraordinary amount of unhappy and angry people in well educated and ‘religious’ countries.
118
Hypocrisy, something Jesus railed against, has become perhaps the most prominent feature of the religious right in the Trump era.
119
Everywhere in the world there are tensions – economic, political, religious. So we need chocolate.
120
We shall say clearly that any symbol conspicuously displaying religious affiliation in school is prohibited.
121
I think we recognize as Americans there are certain things that are just primary to the freedoms and liberties that we enjoy here and religious freedom is one of the most important things we as Americans cherish.
122
I’m Jewish, but not overly religious, and have certainly never formally observed the Fourth Commandment, other than via the tradition of wearing white on Friday nights at summer camp, which never seemed to dovetail with the fact that Fridays were also the night for grape juice.
123
I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren’t.
124
For as Jews, the problem happens to be more urgent and vital than for others; because the destruction of religion on America will involve the destruction also of the religious training of freedom; and with that our civil liberties.
Louis Finkelstein
125
When does life begin? When does the soul enter? That’s a religious question. Science is not going to be able to help with that.
126
A strong case can be made for religious leaders to speak out on political issues.
127
Moreover, I want us to urge political and religious leaders, and all peoples of the world, to move forward in a conciliatory spirit, to deal with religious matters in a responsible and balanced way, and to focus on their common grounds.
128
The notion of religious liberty is that you cannot be forced to participate in a religious ceremony that’s not of your choosing simply because you’re out-voted.
Ira Glasser
129
I first began to read religious books at school, and especially the Bible, when I was eleven years old; and almost immediately commenced a habit of secret prayer.
Francis W. Newman
130
Many good sayings are to be found in holy books, but merely reading them will not make one religious.
131
I was raised in a very religious household – it wasn’t dogma, but we were raised Christian; we went to church every Sunday, Bible study, Bible camp every summer.
132
In Barack Obama, Democrats have put forth a man of strong religious faith who is comfortable connecting his spiritual life to his public role as a policymaker.
Mike McCurry
133
The problem with Bush is that yes, he’s religious in a fundamentalist sort of way, they read the Old Testament as a sort of charter for the chosen people to do what they like.
Bruce Kent
134
Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and religious persecution.
135
In the West there has always been the attempt to try make the religious building, whether it’s a Medieval or Renaissance church, an eternal object for the celebration of God. The material chosen, such as stone, brick, or concrete, is meant to eternally preserve what is inside.
136
Being a purely instrumental album, it makes a musical statement, not a religious one, and I hope that people can feel the emotion of the great melodies, even without the words.
137
Debating religious beliefs are a red line, a deep red line.
Pope Shenouda III
138
I hope that no American will waste his franchise and throw away his vote by voting either for me or against me solely on account of my religious affiliation. It is not relevant.
139
Buddhism has become a socially recognized religious philosophy for Americans, whereas it used to be considered an exotic religion.
140
Religious wars are not caused by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance… the spread of which can only be regarded as the total eclipse of human reason.
141
As a chef, you need to respect your guests and their needs. If they decide that they want to eat certain things and not eat others, if for religious reasons or just decide they don’t want to eat certain ingredients, you have to respect that.
142
The left and right are not religious categories. They’re often not even value categories.
143
Certainly I’m a Christian first and foremost. But I do believe in religious tolerance and finding the commonality between all of us. I think that’s how we’re all going to come together.
144
Some people keep God in a Sunday morning box and say, ‘Hey, I did my religious duty.’ That’s fine, but the scripture says to pray without ceasing. And I think that means all through the day you’re talking to God. Even if it’s in your thoughts.
145
As a follower of Jesus, I am called to work for justice and reconciliation, and to be an advocate for those who cannot speak for themselves. I plan to focus my future work on human rights and religious freedom – both domestic and international – as well as matters of the culture and the American family.
Frank Wolf
146
That man is a religious being, is universally conceded, for it has been seen to be universally true.
147
I have a great advantage over many of my colleagues inasmuch as my students bring with them to class their own personal knowledge of national, regional, religious, ethnic, occupational, and family folklore traditions.
148
So I went to English school, secondary English school, so forget going to Mecca for my religious education.
149
I wasn’t brought up with any religion at all. At school and in my early 20s, I read every religious text I could get my hands on – Buddhist scriptures, Hindu texts, the Qur’an, and the Bible. I wanted to feel like something made sense to me, that there was something sacred I could feel aligned with.
150
Of course the case of the Christian Church planted among the nations must differ, in various ways, from that of any sect forming in connection with religious awakening in a territory of professing Christianity.
Robert Rainy
151
I’ve always been a religious guy, but not overly religious. I’ve always believed in God and Jesus. I pray.
Kevin Sorbo
152
It is no coincidence that so many religious beliefs date back to times when no science could possibly have accounted satisfactorily for many of the natural phenomena inspiring scripture and myths.
153
The brutal truth is, we’re scarcelyeducating‘ children at all. Even if you overlook the guilt, fear, bigotry, and dangerous anti-intellectual flapdoodle being funneled into young brains by schools on the religious right, what we’re doing is training kids to be cogs in the wheels of commerce.
154
I’ve been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that’s kind of a religious belief. I mean, it’s at least a moral belief.
155
I think, as a secular woman who heads a religious party and lives in Tel Aviv, we don’t have so many problems on religion and state. Politicians, like Yair Lapid and Avigdor Liberman, are trying to create these problems for all different reasons and interests in order to get more votes.
156
Offspring, the due performance on religious rites, faithful service, highest conjugal happiness and heavenly bliss for the ancestors and oneself, depend on one’s wife alone.
157
The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism.
158
All the great evils which men cause to each other because of certain intentions, desires, opinions, or religious principles, are likewise due to non-existence, because they originate in ignorance, which is absence of wisdom.
159
We want to protect freedom of speech, but it is not unlimited freedom of speech. There has always been rules around defamation, slander and libel, and in Victoria, we have effective rules on racial and religious vilification.
160
The decline and fall of the modern religious right’s notion of a Christian America creates a calmer political environment and, for many believers, may help open the way for a more theologically serious religious life.
161
I come from a religious family – my father is a pastor, my uncle, my sister and her husband are a pastor team.
162
The first reason for the preponderant influence of those Evangelicals who define themselves as advocates of Religious Right theological and political ideologies is that they have both the financial means and technological know-how to make widespread use of modern electronic forms of communication.
163
I definitely believe in a God and in a higher power, and I definitely take from many different religious cultures. I go to church.
164
A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
165
My first teacher… was extremely strict, mean, and deeply religious.
166
Whenever there is a catastrophe, some religious people inevitably ask, ‘Why didn’t God do something? Where was God when all those people died?’
167
Not all Modern Orthodox Jews, at the present juncture, identify with what the Israeli government does. In Israel many religious Zionists strongly oppose the government because of the disengagement.
Norman Lamm
168
Under this president, we have a government that has grown too big, too costly and now even more overbearing by forcing religious entities to abandon their beliefs.
169
The separation of church and state was meant to protect church from state; a state that declares religion off limits in public life is a state that declares itself supreme over all religious values.
170
I have never separated the writing of poetry from prayer. I have grown up believing it is a vocation, a religious vocation.
171
Most religious stories and mythologies have some sort of similar root, some sort of global archetypes.
172
In most cases, my visits to the West are for promotion of human values and religious harmony.
173
Judaism is much more communal, and partly as a consequence of my religious switch, I am increasingly more suspicous of my previous view that what people do in the privacy of their own home is their business alone.
174
One’s political views and/or religious beliefs should not exist in an impenetrable and inviolable bubble wherein they are protected from criticism or scrutiny.
175
To make the moral achievement implicit in science a source of strength to civilization, the scientist will have to have the cooperation also of the philosopher and the religious teacher.
Arthur Compton
176
I love the ACLU and I’m concerned now, especially when it comes to our rights, with current politics and the religious community and the Conservative majority or minority – I don’t know who they are.
177
Yes, I’m religious. God has shown me things, made certain ways clear to me.
178
I feel like we need to be aware of the ways we use and misuse religious dogma: whether it takes us deeper into love and inclusion or it separates us.
179
It is difficult to discern a serious threat to religious liberty from a room of silent, thoughtful schoolchildren.
180
There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker; if sad, it must not scream or curse.
181
If you have religious faith, very good, you can add on secular ethics, then religious belief, add on it, very good. But even those people who have no interest about religion, okay, it’s not religion, but you can train through education.
182
Focus on the mind and the soul. Read. Study. Enrol in a course of lectures. Pray. Become a member of a religious congregation. Study the Bible or other ancient works of wisdom.
183
I love being immersed in nature, going to places in the world that are pristine and untouched by man. It’s almost a religious experience when you go to a place like the Amazon, and there’s no civilisation for thousands of miles.
184
Many artists and writers have used cannabis for creative stimulation – from the writers of the world’s religious masterpieces to our most irreverent satirists.
Jack Herer
185
The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
186
And the whole world, the whole world that believes in freedom, whether you’re talking about personal freedom, economic freedom, religious freedom, they look to the United States for leadership; and you’re part of that leadership.
Don Nickles
187
I was raised Jewish, my wife was raised Catholic. Though we respect each other’s heritage, and while many of our friends are deeply religious, we have chosen to focus on our similarities, not our differences. We teach our children compassion, charity, honesty and the benefits of hard work.
Steven Levitan
188
Because of our sacred regard for each human intellect, we consider the obtaining of an education to be a religious responsibility.
189
I’ve been married before, but I’ve never had my dream wedding in Vegas. I wanted to do it there because it’s casual, quick, not religious and, most of all, very romantic.
190
At the time I perceived most religious men, particularly the pastors with all their talk about love, faith and relationship, as effeminate.
191
The only religious way to think of death is as part and parcel of life.
192
Religious phenomena are naturally arranged in two fundamental categories: beliefs and rites. The first are states of opinion, and consist in representations; the second are determined modes of action.
193
My childhood beliefs became so much a part of me that even today I find myself automatically living by a personal standard of conduct which can only be explained as resulting from my religious training.
194
I’m not a really religious person, but those moments onstage feel like some sort of religious experience because no one holds back, especially ‘Stay With Me’ when I finish the show. It kind of turns into an anthem when I perform it live, and it feels like there’s a lot of love in the room.
195
My generation, faced as it grew with a choice between religious belief and existential despair, chose marijuana. Now we are in our Cabernet stage.
196
On September 11, the murders of World Trade Center employees and visitors took the lives of numerous nationalities, ethnic groups and religious followers.
197
Members of weakly religious families get, of course, no religious training from any source outside the family.
198
Besides the healthcare bill being unconstitutional and a great expansion of federal government, I think if it does not respect people’s individual religious views and makes groups or individuals do things that are contrary to their deeply held beliefs, there is going to be a visceral negative reaction.
199
I think the moral majority and religious right have been shrinking and having not quite as loud a voice in America, and all of a sudden people are coming to their own realizations going, ‘Joe down the street is gay and he’s a great guy.’
200
We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.
201
I definitely had a very religious upbringing. My father was just instilling good morals into us at a very young age, and it wasn’t super-strict, but it was a loving, warm household.
202
The facts are plain: Religious leaders who preside over marriage ceremonies must and will be guided by what they believe. If they do not wish to celebrate marriages for same-sex couples, that is their right. The Supreme Court says so. And the Charter says so.
203
Establishing an equilibrium between the Islam of truth and Islam as an identity is one of the most difficult tasks of religious intellectuals.
204
As a Christian, there is no other part of the New Right ideology that concerns me more than its self-serving misuse of religious faith.
Mark Hatfield
205
My concern with religion is that it allows us by the millions to believe what only lunatics or idiots could believe on their own. That’s not to say that all religious people are lunatics or idiots. It’s anything but that.
206
I have decided to follow in my sinful ways, and have largely abandoned the increasingly religious life I was leading over the previous months, including several hours of Talmudic study a day.
207
Perfection does not consist in any singular state or condition of life, or in any particular set of duties, but in holy and religious conduct of ourselves in every state of Life.
William Law
208
I’m not a religious person. But, when I look at a beautiful cathedral, what brings awe, what induces awe is the idea that architecture, you know, a beautiful cathedral, a beautiful building.
209
We’ve never been a religious band, but the media wants us to be.
210
At the time, acid made me consider questions of reality, the difference, as someone said, between words and silence. It also brought back a lot of latent religious feelings in me that I had turned my back on.
Robert Stone
211
All religions accept that there is something called ‘criminality.’ And criminality cannot be excused by religious fervour.
212
What the Pope thinks of being gay does not matter to the world. It matters to the people who like the Pope and follow the Pope… It is not a reflection of all religious people.
213
I have an immigrant story. Most people come here for economic reasons, or religious reasons, or racial reasons, or gender reasons, or one of those things. I had a good job in Paris, but America was, and still is, the golden fleece. And I’ve done very well!
214
Religious freedom opens a door for Americans that is closed to too many others around the world. But whether we walk through that door, and what we do with our lives after we do, is up to us.
215
I see in the rising crescendo of ethnic tensions, civilization clashes and the use of religious justification for acts of terror, a clear and present danger to humanity.
216
To be quite honest, I’m not religious.
217
When I was 21, I wanted to write like Kafka. But, unfortunately for me, I wrote like a script editor for ‘The Simpsons‘ who’d briefly joined a religious cult and then discovered Foucault. Such is life.
218
I would love to get in trouble with the Catholic Church. I’m not religious myself, but my issue is with the organization. It’s an organization of men – it’s not about faith.
219
In theater or movies you see either ‘I’m religious’ or ‘I’m an atheist.’ I’ve never seen too much discussion of ‘I believe there’s a higher power but I’m hesitant to reach out to him because I don’t know if I’m worthy of his attention.’
220
Most Modern Orthodox are religious Zionists. Despite all differences and nuances among us, we consider the founding of the State a historic change. We accept it as something that came from Providence.
Norman Lamm
221
Those who are devoted to amusements; who love the society of those who love pleasure, have an aversion to religious exercises.
222
For us, holding on to religious rules, and following them, and refraining from what’s forbidden, and being diligent with our duties, what do we call that? That’s what we call freedom.
223
I think the thing that I admire about Rick Santorum is that he hasn’t backed down or apologized one bit for his personal religious views, for standing up for social conservative values.
224
But I do think that we approach music, in of itself, with a religious attitude.
Jon Fishman
225
I believe in an India of pluralism and diversity, not of religious bigotry and caste politics. I believe in an India that is secure in itself and confident of its place in the world, an India that is a proud example of tolerance, freedom and hope for the downtrodden.
226
Anytime you want to get into religious or political views, that can instantly polarize people.
227
When you have increasing power of religious groups, oppression of women increases. Women are oppressed in all religions.
228
All religious leaders and spiritual teachers emphasize finding a place within us that is true. People who obsessively follow these leaders instead of their own purpose attach to the spiritual leader and become fanatical and controlling. That’s why Jesus tried to tell his followers not to get attached to outward form.
229
It is from the traditional family that we absorb those universal ideals and principles which are the teaching of Jesus, the bedrock of our religious faith. We are taught the difference between right and wrong, and about the law, just punishment and discipline.
Kamisese Mara
230
You don’t have to call it God or Jesus. That’s religious humbug to a lot of people, but you’ve gotta believe that nature and spiritual things surround us. That is what put us here! I thank the universe for that every day of my life.
231
I respect all religions, but I’m not a deeply religious person. But I try and live life in the right way, respecting other people. I wasn’t brought up in a religious way, but I believe there’s something out there that looks after you.
232
A necessary consequent of religious belief is the attaching ideas of merit to that belief, and of demerit to its absence.
233
All political debates, from tax policy to abortion, draw on moral arguments that rest on religious premises.
234
Gay marriage is the last bastion of, to me… as a legal, ceremonial, sentimental and religious side, it’s one of the last steps. Retaining your job being one of the earlier steps, like, not getting kicked out of your job because you’re gay.
235
Am I a criminal? The world knows I’m not a criminal. What are they trying to put me in jail for? You’ve lost common sense in this society because of religious fanaticism and dogma.
236
As someone who escaped religious persecution in Lebanon and whose parents were kidnapped in Beirut, I fully support the protection of all individuals from institutional discrimination. That said, I am weary of the ethos of victimhood that has parasitized our culture.
237
People get cranky when you burst their bubble. Over time, advances in astronomy have relentlessly reinforced the utter insignificance of Earth on a celestial scale. Fortunately, political and religious leaders stopped barbecuing astronomers for saying so, turning their spits with human-rights activists instead.
238
Learn to reverence night and to put away the vulgar fear of it, for, with the banishment of night from the experience of man, there vanishes as well a religious emotion, a poetic mood, which gives depth to the adventure of humanity.
Henry Beston
239
I think there ought to be a strict separation or wall built between our religious faith and our practice of political authority in office. I don’t think the President of the United States should extoll Christianity if he happens to be a Christian at the expense of Judaism, Islam or other faiths.
240
Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma.
241
My education was dominated by modernist thinkers and artists who taught me that the supreme imperative was courage to face the awful truth, to scorn the soft-minded optimism of religious and secular romantics as well as the corrupt optimism of governments, advertisers, and mechanistic or manipulative revolutionaries.
Ellen Willis
242
Religious suffering is at once the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of the heartless world, as it is the soul of soulless condition. It is the opium of the people.
243
The U.S. is off the spectrum in religious commitment.
244
I guess my religious faith sustained me more than anything else. Family is also very important. If I didn’t have children, it would have been too difficult. Even if you are strong, you still need people who would support you all the way.
245
Incidents happen that mean more mail. The birth of children, obviously, a sudden religious marriage, the tragic loss of a cat – I had over 2,000 letters when my cat disappeared.
246
This is appalling. The idea that a person could be punished because of their religious belief and the idea they might be executed is just beyond belief.
247
The religious superstitions of women perpetuate their bondage more than all other adverse influences.
248
The argument on the other side of special rights is completely bogus. It’s bogus because you could make exactly the same claim about racial or ethnic or religious minorities.
249
Is woman a religion? Well, perhaps you will have the chance of judging for yourselves if you go to America. There you will find men treating women with just the same respect formerly accorded only to religious dignitaries or to great nobles.
250
I believe that nothing enjoys a higher estate in our society than the right given by the First and Fourteenth Amendments freely to practice and proclaim one’s religious convictions.
Frank Murphy
251
Now I have to say I’m a complete atheist, I have no religious views myself and no spiritual views, except very watered down humanistic spiritual views, and consciousness is just a fact of life, it’s a natural fact of life.
252
Because there are now online databases of federally funded research, and these databases are searchable by keyword, sex researchers have to be careful how they title their projects. It’s become a simple matter, for those who are so inclined, to find and target researchers whose work they object to on religious grounds.
253
I was never pushed into the religion by my mother or anyone else. I made up my own mind when I was old enough. I am not a religious person, but I am spiritual.
254
Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt.
Paul Tillich
255
In an age robbed of religious symbols, going to the shops replaces going to the church. We have a free choice, but at a price. We can win experience, but never achieve innocence. Marx knew that the epic activities of the modern world involve not lance and sword but dry goods.
Stephen Bayley
256
I’m not religious, but I’m very spiritual.
257
There are reasons why Religious Right Evangelicals will continue to dominate religious discourse, not only in their own sector of the Christian community, but also in what transpires in mainline denominations.
258
All religion seems to need to prove that it’s the only truth. And that’s where it turns demonic. Because that’s when you get religious wars and persecutions and burning heretics at the stake.
259
Bad religion is arrogant, self-righteous, dogmatic and intolerant. And so is bad science. But unlike religious fundamentalists, scientific fundamentalists do not realize that their opinions are based on faith. They think they know the truth.
260
All my life I thank God. My family was very religious.
261
My parents are pretty religious, devout, but did they force it on me? No, I don’t think so. I still think of myself as a Lutheran, just one who doesn’t go to church.
262
Virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest pleasure; but if we cultivate it only for pleasure’s sake, we are selfish, not religious, and will never gain the pleasure, because we can never have the virtue.
263
My family was very open. My grandfather was German and a Protestant. My father, a lawyer, was Greek-Catholic and played the violin. My mother was very religious and went to church twice a day. My grandmother was Armenian. So I was raised with three different faiths – that’s why I am so open.
264
The Indian was a religious man from his mother’s womb.
265
A just laicism allows religious freedom. The state does not impose religion but rather gives space to religions with a responsibility toward civil society, and therefore it allows these religions to be factors in building up society.
266
I was raised into the Romanian Orthodox culture by my parents, and most notably my mother, who is a profoundly religious and spiritual woman.
267
A lot of people who are religious, I think they get lost. They go to church just to go to church.
268
I’m a spiritual person and a religious person. But for me, it’s all a personal thing. I’m not someone who’ll say, ‘This is what I believe, and you should too!’ It’s more of an internal, quiet, grounded, fulfilling thing for me.
269
I am against the word ‘anti’ because it’s a little bit like ‘atheist,’ as compared to ‘believer.’ And an atheist is just as much of a religious man as the believer is.
270
Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary ‘real’ world.
271
The power of the American system of republicanism lies in its capacity to allow religious belief to be a competing, not a controlling, factor in American life.
272
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.
273
None of my paintings I would say are religious.
Akiane Kramarik
274
I am not a religious person, but I am spiritual. But I don’t believe in things like guilt.
275
Those who wish to cause religious conflict are small in number but often manage to dominate the headline.
276
I’m not religious. I was as a child, and like lots of people, I suppose, rapidly became very disillusioned with the whole thing. I also feel that organised religion has caused far more problems than it has solved.
277
I’m in awe of the universe, but I don’t necessarily believe there’s an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.
278
Starbucks says they are going to start putting religious quotes on cups. The very first one will say, ‘Jesus! This cup is expensive!’
279
I want to host a religious show. I’m sure nobody will be wanting the 11 o’clock spot on Sunday morning. I think we should really get some of our own preachers and preach that gay is good. And we’d have a great choir.
Kate Clinton
280
My mom is very liberal. She has never been religious… spiritual but not religious.
281
As a preacher who has spent significant time in churches and houses of worship all across the country, I can tell you firsthand that religious liberty and freedom are principles that can never be infringed upon.
282
From the smallest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from one attribute of man – the function of his reasoning mind.
283
When many astronauts go to space, they see the insignificant size of the earth and vastness of space, and they become very religious, because they have seen the Signs of Allah.
284
I beg you be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.
285
Allow the diversity to exist. There is nothing wrong with it. Hell, we put up with the religious right-we can put up with transgendered human beings.
286
The holiday season can be an especially trying time for our service men, women, and families. Military service and deployment create empty seats at holiday tables, religious services, and celebrations.
Geoff Stults
287
It is usually when men are at their most religious that they behave with the least sense and the greatest cruelty.
Ilka Chase
288
A religious life is a struggle and not a hymn.
Madame de Stael
289
Yeah, I guess I’m not a particularly religious person, but I do really believe strongly that we all need to believe in something, and that’s very personal to each one of us.
290
If a person is homosexual by nature – that is, if one’s sexuality is as intrinsic a part of one’s identity as gender or skin color – then society can no more deny a gay person access to the secular rights and religious sacraments because of his homosexuality than it can reinstate Jim Crow.
291
We spend millions of dollars per year supplying more than adequate meals and a Koran to every detainee along with a prayer rug that meets their religious standards.
Bill Shuster
292
My view on Islam is that it is not so much a religion as a totalitarian political ideology with religious elements.
293
I don’t trust that the big-business part of our coalition is ever going to defend federalism and argue against regulatory capture. I don’t trust that populists are going to defend religious liberty and the rights of creedal minorities.
294
That human behavior is more influenced by things outside of us than inside. The ‘situation‘ is the external environment. The inner environment is genes, moral history, religious training.
295
Our moral, religious, and political traditions are united in their respect for the dignity of human life.
296
My dad was a militant atheist, or is a militant atheist. My mum was sort of bought up in a religious family because she was a Protestant from Ireland but wasn’t especially religious.
297
Any religious organization should be allowed to hire based on their religious preference- but not with federal dollars.
Jose Serrano
298
Unlike Milan, Italy‘s banking capital, or Rome, its religious center, Florence was the place where the rich went to buy goods that would showcase how wealthy they were.
299
Religious belief has made me comfortable with ambiguity.
300
The liberty of the Press is the Palladium of all the civil, political and religious rights of an Englishman.
Junius
301
In Holland, they have come to precisely the same conclusion. There they have adopted a system of secular education, because they have found it impracticable to unite the religious bodies in any system of combined religious instruction.
302
It becomes us in humility to make our devout acknowledgments to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe for the inestimable civil and religious blessings with which we are favored.
303
I’ve been an atheist since I was nine years old. And my mom is really religious, so we have a strange relationship. But if my mother was right, what would be the reason that the gods could let anything bad happen in the world?
Tarsem Singh
304
We should not run away from religious teachings. We should run to them.
305
Whenever a political regime or religious establishment refuses to tolerate criticism, it advertises itself as repressive, backward, and insecure.
306
I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life – that is to say, over 35 – there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.
307
And the fifteenth century was an impassioned age, so ardent and serious in its pursuit of art that it consecrated everything with which art had to ad as a religious object.
308
Reject racial or religious hate. Embrace moderate Islam.
309
For me, and maybe for many religious kids of the ’60s, the church lost relevance the more it became a surrogate in the movement for social and political change.
Mike McCurry
310
Al-Aksa is a religious and national symbol.
311
The Egyptian tomb was the outcome of the Mesopotamian influence and followed from the religious crisis the country had undergone.
312
I mean, I really don’t want the federal government to be determining whether or not a person who feels certain ways about the environment or about animals or about certain religious issues should be considered an extremist. That to me is a type of thought control, mind control, which is very dangerous.
313
While the struggle for religious liberty had proceeded without large-scale bloodshed in New England and elsewhere in the United States, the struggle for political liberty had not fared so well.
314
Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence.
315
Mankind are divided into sects, and individuals think very differently on religious subjects, from the purest motives; and that gracious common Parent, who loves all his children alike, beholds with approbation every one who worships him in sincerity.
316
The American Dream has always focused on building a better life for yourself and your family, striving for success, and even fleeing from religious prosecution.
317
Extremism can flourish only in an environment where basic governmental social responsibility for the welfare of the people is neglected. Political dictatorship and social hopelessness create the desperation that fuels religious extremism.
318
He had a theory, Walt did, that the religious life, and all the agony that goes with it, is just something God sics on people who have the gall to accuse Him of having created an ugly world.
319
I don’t know of any cases where as a result of religious precepts a population have found themselves enjoying less food than they would have if they didn’t follow this particular religion.
320
Religious celebrations, and the good will, high spirits and generosity that mark them, are wonderful occasions for understanding the potential of ‘everyday multiculturalism‘, and how people from diverse faiths can connect and show they care, rather than go down parallel, sometimes hostile, roads.
321
I believe in God; I’m not saying I’m highly religious.
322
Remarkable is the greater openness of the Catholic Church towards people of other religious traditions and persuasions. The development has not been without problems, since some people have resisted it and others have pushed openness beyond the desirable point.
Francis Arinze
323
I’m not a religious person. I’m Catholic, so I consider myself more of a spiritual person. I believe in God.
324
I know that we shall meet problems along the way, but I’d far rather see for myself what’s going on in the world outside, than rely on newspapers, television, politicians and religious leaders to tell me what I should be thinking.
325
One of my good friends is Christian, goes to church every Sunday, very religious. I’m fine with that and I will never judge her.
326
I tend to believe that religious dogma is a consequence of evolution.
327
I don’t think religious groups should be allowed to apply for federal funds to start new ministries they have not been doing before the funding was available.
328
I am a very proud Hindu. The foundation of my personality is laid on the teachings of Swami Vivekananda or Sanatan Dharm or the Geeta. And if my religious practices or anybody’s religious practices is given any kind of sadistic name, it instills fear about other person’s religious practices.
Kangana Ran
aut
329
I like to think of religion as languages, our religion is very cultural, it has a lot to do with where we are born on this planet, it can really impact our religious beliefs.
330
I’m a spiritual person. I’m not very religious. I was raised Catholic, but I am influenced a lot by Buddhism and Hinduism.
Rodrigo Santoro
331
I do not want to suggest that you have to be religious to be moral.
332
Tolkien was quite a religious man, and so is George R.R. Martin. They kind of have this epic quality about them when they write the material.
333
Well, in The Chosen, Danny Saunders, from the heart of his religious reading of the world, encounters an element in the very heart of the secular readings of the world – Freudian psychoanalytic theory.
334
In my opinion, the battles over birth control and Planned Parenthood are primarily neither political nor religious. This is an issue of equality for women. This is an issue of women’s rights: Planned Parenthood is the most important private provider of reproductive health care for women in the United States.
335
Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying No to any authority – literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political.
Ignazio Silone
336
While few religious leaders and scholars would doubt the commonalities that exist among the various religious groups, the followers of these religions unfortunately struggle in their effort to peacefully coexist.
337
Life’s too short and too complicated for people behind desks, people behind masks to be ruining other people’s lives, initiating force against other people’s lives on the basis of their income, their color, their class, their religious beliefs, whatever.
338
You can not divorce religious belief and public service. I’ve never detected any conflict between God’s will and my political duty. If you violate one, you violate the other.
339
Religious belief, like history itself, is a story that is always unfolding, always subject to inquiry and ripe for questioning. For without doubt there is no faith.
340
More and more people care about religious tolerance as fewer and fewer care about religion.
Alexander Chase
341
Religious relativism is not the answer to disagreement between faiths; yet relativism, and a blurring of religious distinctions, all too often result when two deeply believing faith communities engage each other in the public arena on theological issues.
342
There are many very educated people who are religious, but they’re not creationists.
343
I can say, ‘Well, I’m a male. I’m a male human. I’m a medical doctor. I’m an author…’ If I go to a religious point of view, I will say, ‘I am a soul. I am a spirit.’ If I go into science, I will say, ‘I am energy. I am light.’ But the truth is I have no idea what I am.
344
I’m not a real religious guy. I’m a spiritual guy and my religion is love.
345
I don’t think it’s any coincidence that I lost my religious faith and ‘manned up’ in the same year. I was described somewhere as a lapsed Catholic, which is funny because I’m not going back! I want to achieve things rather than live life in an animalistic way.
346
In fact, the U.S. military has bent over backwards to respect the religious beliefs of some very dangerous fanatics who want to kill us.
Linda Chavez
347
I find it difficult to imagine an afterlife, such as Christians, or at any rate many religious people, conceive it, believing that the conversations with relatives and friends interrupted here on earth will be continued in the hereafter.
348
Jiro Ono serves Edo-style traditional sushi, the same 20 or 30 pieces he’s been making his whole life, and he’s still unsatisfied with the quality and every day wakes up and trains to make the best. And that is as close to a religious experience in food as one is likely to get.
349
I think most of our religious institutions are pretty corrupt, so they’re not reliable. I think the Christian religion that I was brought up with has very little to do with Christ, really, and more an institutions that have built up around the church.
350
Some of my ancestors were religious dissenters who came to America over three hundred years ago. Others were abolitionists in New England in the eighteen forties and fifties.
351
The Obama administration contends that starting a for-profit business means leaving religious liberty behind. The administration has effectively told the Supreme Court that for-profit companies have no right to act on moral convictions the government opposes. They are about profits. That position is deeply mistaken.
352
The conflict between religion and science is inherent and (very nearly) zero-sum. The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma; the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science.
353
Mum wasn’t at all religious, but she thought that going to the theatre was as important a ceremonial, communal experience that a person could have.
354
I went to boarding school Southern, religious, and straight, and I left boarding school not being at all religious and not being straight.
355
I am proud of being a Somali-American Muslim, and my wardrobe has been an important part of my religious and cultural upbringing.
356
To assert that it is possible to establish peace between men of different nations is simply to assert that man, whatever his ethnical background, his race, religious beliefs, or philosophy, is capable of reason.
Leon Bourgeois
357
I was raised in the church, and there’s still a fire burning inside me. I definitely don’t ever want to be preachy. But less and less young people are religious. The thing is, I see so many positive things about religion, so I’m happy to talk about it.
358
Let them be reassured, it has never been one of our intentions to ban religion in society, but solely to protect the national education system from any conspicuous display of religious affiliation.
359
The astrologers and historians write that the ascendant as of Oxford is Capricornus, whose lord is Saturn, a religious planet, and patron of religious men.
John Aubrey
360
I don’t believe in angels, and I’m not a religious person.
361
American Christians are quite able to organize around issues that concern them. Yet religious persecution appears not to have grabbed their attention, despite worldwide media coverage of the atrocities against Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East.
362
If God is sovereign, then it is impossible for civil government to be neutral on issues of law. All law is based in some religious code.
363
America owes most of its social prejudices to the exaggerated religious opinions of the different sects which were so instrumental in establishing the colonies.
364
The concept of neutrality can lead to a brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular and a passive, or even active, hostility to the religious. Such results are not only not compelled by the Constitution, but, it seems to me, are prohibited by it.
Arthur Goldberg
365
Puja brings lots of things together and it isn’t just about the religious aspect. Blessings from elders, family-bonding, togetherness… it’s about all that. It’s also about colors, grandeur and people coming together.
366
I got one letter at the very beginning, like, in the first season, saying – from a woman who was very religious, very Christian, saying how wrong she thought the show was, but she thinks it’s the funniest show on television.
367
Religious liberty is the first freedom in our Constitution. And whether the cause is justice for the persecuted, compassion for the needy and the sick, or mercy for the child waiting to be born, there is no greater force for good in the nation than Christian conscience in action.
368
Both Christians and religious Jews are finding it increasingly difficult to practice their faiths through college groups on so-called mainline campuses in the United States.
369
Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.
370
My parents were early converts to Christianity in my part of Nigeria. They were not just converts; my father was an evangelist, a religious teacher. He and my mother traveled for thirty-five years to different parts of Igboland, spreading the gospel.
371
We had better dispense with the personification of evil, because it leads, all too easily, to the most dangerous kind of war: religious war.
372
We are now in the Me Decadeseeing the upward roll of the third great religious wave in American history.
373
The most likely victim of actual religious discrimination in British society is a Muslim, but the person who is most likely to feel slighted because of their religion is an evangelical Christian.
Trevor Phillips
374
I was for two years a pupil at the Model School in Fort street which was then conducted upon the Irish national system, and if any special religious instruction was given in connection with that system, I do not recollect it.
Edmund Barton
375
Anyone with sincere religious beliefs cannot say that all religions are true. That is so illogical it is pathetic. All religion cannot be true because some of them are so diametrically opposed to each other.
376
Whatever your religious persuasion, if you believe that that the universe is governed by benign forces, at some point you have to explain why there is so much suffering, misfortune and misery in the world.
377
The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their ‘beliefs.’
378
As we get rich, the basics of life – food, clothing and shelter – become a very small part of total expenditure. And people have enough money to purchase things that enhance them spiritually, and I mean the word ‘spiritual’ not necessarily in a religious sense but in the sense that it adds to your feeling of well-being.
Robert Fogel
379
Let it be henceforth proclaimed to the world that man’s conscience was created free; that he is no longer accountable to his fellow man for his religious opinions, being responsible therefore only to his God.
380
Y2K has challenged a belief in digital technology that has been almost religious.
381
My father was very outwardly religious.
382
The whole schizophrenia angle interested me. When I first started working on it, I thought I would play up that angle more than I ended up doing. The religious aspect of the story was also a draw.
383
The question confronting the Church today is not any longer whether the man in the street can grasp a religious message, but how to employ the communications media so as to let him have the full impact of the Gospel message.
384
Responsibility and respect of others and their religious beliefs are also part of freedom.
Horst Koehler
385
I wouldn’t say I’m a religious person, but I am definitely inclined toward asking the big questions.
386
What other nations call religious toleration, we call religious rights. They are not exercised in virtue of governmental indulgence, but as rights, of which government cannot deprive any portion of citizens, however small.
Richard Mentor Johnson
387
I celebrate everyone’s religious holidays. if it’s good enough for the righteous, it’s good enough for the self-righteous, I always say.
388
By respect for life we become religious in a way that is elementary, profound and alive.
389
Prohibiting a visible religious sign, which isn’t a manifestation of militancy, would look like a fight against religions.
390
Democratic societies can no longer give religious fanatics a free hand to abuse and murder non believers. Such action betrays contempt for the basic human rights which animate any democracy with meaning.
391
While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith, our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing – good for our political culture.
392
Beware of generalizations about any faith because they sometimes amount to the religious equivalent of racial profiling. Hinduism contained both Gandhi and the fanatic who assassinated him.
393
My mom is very religious – Catholic – and from a young age they brought me to the church.
394
My own personal, moral, spiritual, religious, etc. beliefs don’t oppose same-gender marriage.
Ed Case
395
The saddest part of the human race is we’re obsessed with this idea of ‘us and them,’ which is really a no-win situation, whether it’s racial, cultural, religious or political.
396
My childhood was limited to mostly gospel music. We didn’t have, like, a lot of records in our house, you know. It was like my grandparents who raised me. They were pretty old-fashioned in their religious ways, so it was like church, church, church, school, school, school.
Faith Evans
397
I confess that for fifteen years my efforts in education, and my hopes of success in establishing a system of national education, have always been associated with the idea of coupling the education of this country with the religious communities which exist.
398
I’m not a religious person. My mom was of Jewish blood and my dad was Protestant.
399
It is a grave matter to enter a war, without adequate military preparation; it may prove fatal to come into peace, without moral and religious preparation.
Louis Finkelstein
400
Realizing that they can’t get their agenda across: against religious liberty, against a culture of life, they can’t get those issues across through the legislature, as people respond and their elected officials represent them, so they attempt to do it through the courts.
Rod Parsley
401
With regard to the moral and religious condition of the slaves, I cannot, either from what I observe, or from what is told me, consider it in any way gratifying.
Frederick Law Olmsted
402
I am a deeply religious nonbeliever – this is a somewhat new kind of religion.
403
I was very, very religious. And of course I wrote about it in ‘Night.’ I questioned God’s silence. So I questioned. I don’t have an answer for that. Does it mean that I stopped having faith? No. I have faith, but I question it.
404
I’m not religious in any formal sense, not in any God sense.
Al Purdy
405
I have always felt that my work is religious, not sacrilegious.
Andres Serrano
406
During my first visit, I was really struck by how deeply religious many Oklahomans are. It is a very conservative state and as somebody who grew up in a very liberal country, it was jarring to me at first.
407
Every major question in history is a religious question. It has more effect in molding life than nationalism or a common language.
Hilaire Belloc
408
There are men who think themselves too wise to be religious.
409
Burzum is not a political or religious band, or even an anti-religious band. Burzum is music – art if you like – and the interpretation of art lies in the eye of the beholder.
410
Since Courbet, it’s been believed that painting is addressed to the retina. That was everyone’s error. The retinal shudder! Before, painting had other functions: it could be religious, philosophical, moral… our whole century is completely retinal, except for the Surrealists, who tried to go outside it somewhat.
411
Caste may be bad. Caste may lead to conduct so gross as to be called man’s inhumanity to man. All the same, it must be recognized that the Hindus observe Caste not because they are inhuman or wrong-headed. They observe Caste because they are deeply religious.
412
Contrary to what the politicians and religious leaders would like us to believe, the world won’t be made safer by creating barriers between people.
413
Some people, both scientists and religious people, deal with uncertainty by being certain. That is dangerous in the fundamentalists and it is dangerous in the fundamentalist scientists.
414
No, we are not the master of the state, said King. We are not the servant of the state. We are the conscience of the state. The churches or the religious community should be, I think, the conscience of the state. We’re not just service providers.
415
Devotion, as it relates to the title of my memoir, means fidelity – as in fidelity to a person or a practice. I think it’s certainly possible to feel devotion without having faith, at least in the religious sense of the word.
416
It is true that the Chinese are not so religious as the Hindus, or even as the Japanese; and they are certainly not so religious as the Christian missionaries desire them to be.
417
You can’t divorce religious belief and public service I’ve never detected any conflict between God’s will and my political duty. If you violate one, you violate the other.
418
My religious point of view is something I can’t talk about. It goes against my belief system to talk publicly about my own spiritual beliefs.
419
I find it greatly disturbing that the Bush administration has used political and religious ideologies to influence national policy on science and medicine.
Tammy Baldwin
420
I’m not a religious person.
421
In times of conflict, war, poverty or religious fundamentalism, women and children are the first and most numerous victims. Women need all their courage today.
422
People truly reaching across boundaries – be they religious or race, political or geographic. A state that is sincerely civil and respectful of each individual‘s pathway toward life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness will be our goal.
423
Let’s say black, the whole black religious experience, here, is very impressive to me, because when I first arrived I realized that people carry their faith with so much pride.
424
We religious controllers control in the name of Jesus and it is really painful to people.
Keith Miller
425
For me sport was a religion… with religious sentiment.
426
Ultimately, America’s answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.
427
The supreme satisfaction is to be able to despise one’s neighbor and this fact goes far to account for religious intolerance. It is evidently consoling to reflect that the people next door are headed for hell.
Aleister Crowley
428
I’d like to design something like a city or a museum. I want to do something hands on rather than just play golf which is the sport of the religious right.
429
Bridges join places that were separated. They are built for the sake of progress and for the average citizen. They even have a religious dimension. Even the word ‘religious’ comes from the Latin, meaning ‘creating a link.’
430
Adherents of the new religious right reject the separation of politics and religion, but they bring no spiritual insights to politics.
431
Military organization, like religious organization, can be seen as a paradigm of organization in general.
432
The distinction between reality and fiction in America seems like it is becoming really blurry. With its religious fanaticism, reality TV programs and fake news broadcasts being aired by the government, the States feel like they are entering the Dark Ages.
Dana Schutz
433
Secular humanists suspect there is something more gloriously human about resisting the religious impulse; about accepting the cold truth, even if that truth is only that the universe is as indifferent to us as we are to it.
Tom Flynn
434
I’m not religious, but by nature I am spiritual. I’m an artist, and creativity seems to go hand in hand with spirituality. But I have a knee-jerk reaction against organized religions. Actually, I have knee-jerk reactions against anything that’s organized.
435
The passion for art is, as for believers, very religious. It unites people, its message is of common humanity. Art has become my religion – others pray in church. It’s a banality, but you don’t possess art, it possesses you. It’s like falling in love.
Francois Pinault
436
Jackson was not a religious man when he came to Lexington.
Daniel H. Hill
437
A great power has to have the discipline not only to go when necessary but to know when not to go. Getting involved in ethnic, religious civil wars is a recipe for disaster.
438
I grew up in Los Angeles in a Quaker family, and for me being Quaker was a political calling rather than a religious one.
439
On the subject of religious belief, we relax standards of reasonableness and evidence that we rely on in every other area of our lives. We relax so totally that people believe the most ludicrous propositions, and are willing to organize their lives around them.
440
Though I am not religious in the least, I am very proud to be Jewish.
441
Religious poetry, civic poetry, lyric or dramatic poetry are all categories of man’s expression which are valid only if the endorsement of formal content is valid.
442
During the weeks before Christmas, though it’s not always possible, we make an effort to keep the kids away from shopping malls and stores. We also deliberately choose cards and decorations that have religious significance.
443
Unhappy, let alone angry, religious people provide more persuasive arguments for atheism and secularism than do all the arguments of atheists.
444
I’m religious about salted butter. I don’t understand how it happened that everyone thought we should all have sweet butter. I blame the French.
445
A man is as old as his arteries and his interests. If he permits his economic, religious, or social arteries to harden, or loses interest in whatever concerns mankind… he will need only six feet of earth.
Josephus Daniels
446
I’m vegan, though not completely religious about it. While writing ‘Sapiens,’ I became familiar with how we treat animals in the meat and dairy industries. I was so horrified that I didn’t want to be a part of it anymore.
447
Genesis fans are a religious group!
448
One of the greatest gifts God ever gave to humanity was that of liberty. We love freedom and bloom under it. We cannot and should not try to force people to live by a certain religious code. To do so negates our free will.
449
Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.
450
The style of the Bible in general is singularly adapted to men of every class and grade of culture, affording the child the simple nourishment for its religious wants, and the profoundest thinker inexhaustible matter of study.
Philip Schaff
451
North Eurasia is one of the best examples of religious tolerance and peaceful coexistence of Islam and Christianity. This is a rare thing in today’s world, even in its most liberal parts.
Nursultan Nazarbayev
452
I don’t think we should discriminate against an organization or congregation because they’re religious, if they’re doing good work. But government can’t subsidize proselytizing or worship or religious activity. It can’t.
453
The sight of nature fascinates, the family tie has a sweet enchantment and patriotism gives the religious spirit a fiery devotion to the powers that it reveres.
Bruno Bauer
454
I’d never been religious, but I’d always obeyed my elders. My decision to become an omnivore was fraught, not because it was a religious transgression but because it was my first act of self-assertion as a young adult.
455
I’m very wary of large groups of people getting together and trying to believe the same thing. It never seems to end well, whether it’s political or religious or whatever.
456
I have never been religious. I talk to God every day, but He’s never said a word to me about religion! I think the most powerful prayer is surrender.
Raymond Moody
457
To uphold religious tolerance, it is very wise that an adherent of a religion should not do something forbidden in another religion in front of the adherent of the latter.
458
The argument that gay marriage doesn’t affect straight marriages is a ridiculous red herring: Gay marriage affects society and law in dramatic ways. Religious groups will come under direct assault as federal and state governments move to strip them of their non-profit statuses if they refuse to perform gay marriages.
459
I wanted to be a Priest at one point. I was pretty religious. I was an altar boy, and I was good at it. Then, I started meeting girls and I’m like ‘You know, maybe I shouldn’t be a Priest.’
460
Unless one is a religious fundamentalist and believes that man was created in the image and likeness of God, it is foolish to believe that human beings are exempt from biological classification and the laws of evolution that apply to all other life forms.
J. Philippe Rushton
461
I had a somewhat religious upbringing. Not strict, but it was there, and I’m kind of thankful for that. If you grow up just watching MTV, that’s its own form of religion, and it’s not even based on happiness or communal responsibility. I mean, try to construct a worldview out of that.
462
But alas, they are all sadly deficient, because they leave us under the domination of political and religious prejudices; and they are as inefficient as the sleepy dose of an ordinary sermon.
Adam Weishaupt
463
From the beginning, religious faith animated the American quest to explore the heavens.
464
The United States may be a religious nation. But it is also a nation with a strong commitment to separation of church and state.
465
The Muslim world is threatened by religious fanaticism. The Western world is threatened by secular fanaticism.
466
The applicability of the Establishment Clause to public funding of benefits to religious schools was settled in Everson v. Board of Ed. of Ewing, which inaugurated the modern era of establishment doctrine.
467
I was raised Jehovah‘s Witness. I was in Bible school at five or six years old, but I wouldn’t say that we were a religious family.
468
There are quite a lot of YouTube clips of me that have gone viral. One that I think of is of a young woman at a lecture I was giving – she came from Liberty University, which is a ludicrous religious institution. She said, ‘What if you are wrong?’ and I answered that rather briefly, and that’s gone viral.
469
Indeed, one of the most successful and influential religious organizations in history, the Society of Jesus, was consciously modeled along military lines by its founder, Ignatius Loyola.
470
The world’s a mean place. It’s unfair, then it’s fair. It’s hateful, then it’s loving. It’s a very peculiar place on philosophical and metaphysical and religious levels.
471
Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.
472
Let’s not leave an educational vacuum to be filled by religious extremists who go to families who have no other option and offer meals, housing and some form of education. If we are going to combat extremism then we must educate those very same children.
473
Though claiming to represent a conservative form of Christianity, the Religious Right is politically a form of Protestant liberalism.
474
It strikes me as odd that the free exercise of religious faith is sometimes treated as a problem, something America is stuck with instead of blessed with.
475
Instead of plotting the demise of the traditional family, as some politicians and religious leaders would have you believe, gay people mow their lawns and watchAmerican Idol‘ and video their children’s concerts and have the same hopes and dreams that their straight counterparts do.